Plate-type heat exchangers comprising a stack of spaced-apart plate pairs are known. Such heat exchangers are commonly employed for effecting heat transfer between a first fluid that pass through fluid channels formed by the plate pairs, and a second fluid that passes between the spaced-apart stacked plate pairs.
There is a continual need for improved heat exchangers of this type which are economical to manufacture and which provide for a degree of flexibility in design of the resulting heat exchanger to allow the heat exchanger to be customized for a particular use or customer requirement. Achieving a particular arrangement of fluid passes within a heat exchanger and accommodating various locations of headers/collectors or inlet/outlet manifolds (or fluid ports) often requires different heat exchanger plates to be manufactured in order to achieve a heat exchanger suited for a particular application. Whenever there is a change to the design, a new heat exchanger plate must be manufactured to accommodate the changes. Heat exchangers that require multiple plate designs to achieve desired flow patterns, fluid port locations and/or space/size requirements are costly given the number of different plate designs, corresponding dies, etc. that are required for manufacturing purposes. Given the ever-increasing pressure on space and/or size requirements and ever-changing customer requirements for size, shape, number of fluid passes, and fluid port locations for a particular heat exchanger, providing a heat exchanger with a single plate design that offers flexibility regarding the final, overall design of the heat exchanger combined with economical manufacturing costs is highly desirable.